


Strangers Like Me

by imaginary_golux



Category: Barsoom & Related Fandoms, Tarzan - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, Shirtless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:00:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22905883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginary_golux/pseuds/imaginary_golux
Summary: Jane gets to college at the start of the spring semester, and her new housemates are...Well, one of them is pretty much always shirtless, let's start there.Beta by my Best Beloved, Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw.
Relationships: Jane Porter/Tarzan
Comments: 21
Kudos: 78
Collections: February Ficlet Challenge 2020





	Strangers Like Me

Jane doesn’t regret going with her father on his sabbatical - he needs someone to make sure he _eats_ , if nothing else - but it does mean that she’s starting college a semester late, which means she doesn’t have much choice in dorm. She’s been put in a little coed house slightly off the beaten path, a decent walk from the dining hall but in a fairly picturesque part of town, right on the edge of the woods. And she has a roommate.

A _stunningly_ beautiful roommate who, when Jane knocks and opens the door, is wearing a bikini and nothing else.

“Hi!” says the stunningly beautiful woman, rolling to her feet and holding out one elegant hand. “I’m Dejah Thoris. You must be Jane Porter!”

“Ah. Yes?” says Jane, rather taken aback.

“Welcome to Misfits House,” Dejah Thoris says. “Do you need help moving anything in?”

“I’ve got a couple of heavy bags, so if someone could hold the door…” Jane says tentatively.

“We can do better than that,” Dejah Thoris says, and goes over to the window, leaning out rather precariously. “Hey, _Tarzan!_ ”

There’s a distant whoop, out in the forest, and Dejah Thoris backs away from the window. A few moments later, someone comes _swinging through the trees_ , lands neatly on the grass beside the building, _swarms up the side of the building_ , and slides in through the open window to land, grinning, on the common room’s floor.

He’s at least six feet tall, and built like a Greek god, which Jane can tell, because he is only wearing a pair of the skimpiest shorts she has ever seen on _anyone_.

“ _Bonjour, mademoiselle_!” he says, giving Jane a little bow. “What do you need, Dejah?”

“She needs help carrying things in,” Dejah Thoris says. The man nods and jumps _back out the window_.

“What,” says Jane.

“That’s Tarzan,” Dejah Thoris says. “We’re all pretty sure he was raised by monkeys.” She gestures for Jane to follow her back down the stairs. Jane does so, dazedly.

“Does - does anyone in this house wear _clothes_?” she asks.

“Oh, most of them,” Dejah Thoris says, shrugging. “Tarzan and I are just much more comfortable in our own skin than most people are.”

“Oh. Are you - together?” Jane ventures.

“Oh no!” Dejah Thoris laughs. “My John doesn’t go here. He’s a professional Civil War reenactor. He comes by on weekends, though.”

“I see,” Jane says. Misfits House, huh? She might be able to guess why it’s called that.

*

Over the next week or so, Jane learns several useful things:

The washing machines in the basement only work right if you kick them a little.

Tarzan never wears shirts, and mostly doesn’t wear pants. Just really, really short shorts.

The dining hall’s pizza is an abomination and must not be trusted.

Dejah Thoris _does_ wear shirts, sometimes, but only if they are either skintight or show off her honestly very nice midriff.

Dejah Thoris is, in fact, the princess of some small country Jane has never heard of, and knows Tarzan because _he_ is, technically, an English lord, which is mind-boggling, and makes his whole...shirtlessness even more confusing.

Freshmen get the worst class schedules, which means she has an eight o’clock stats class, which means she doesn’t have time for breakfast on Tuesdays or Thursdays.

Tarzan never uses doors. He always comes in the windows. _Always_. Apparently this is because using doors would mean having his _key_ on him, and his shorts don’t have pockets.

There’s a really good spot in the library near the QHs, that no one else has claimed yet, where she can study in peace. Dejah Thoris is a fairly quiet roommate, but several of the other people in Misfits House like to play video games very loudly at absurd hours.

Tarzan does not like loud video games, and therefore spends most of his time in Misfits House in the common room attached to Jane and Dejah Thoris’s double. He even sleeps on the couch most nights. It kind of feels like Jane’s got a second roommate - a stupidly hot _male_ second roommate - but she has to admit he’s quieter than any of the other guys in the house, and somehow despite the constant shirtlessness, never makes her feel uncomfortable.

Tarzan, despite Jane’s initial assessment of him as a cheerful and reasonably friendly jock with a habit of _not wearing clothes_ and about two brain cells to rub together, is really, really smart. She feels a little bad about her initial assumptions, actually, because it turns out he’s taking all 300 and 400 level classes as a _freshman_ and speaks three languages fluently. He’s actually in Jane’s high-level Biology class. He wears pants, and everything. (Not shirts, but that may have been too much to ask for.)

And he’s _sweet_. Well, she kind of guessed that given his easy assent to helping her unpack, but it’s more than that. He holds doors for people - not just women, _anyone_ \- and helps people carry heavy things, and is tutoring at least one person in their shared Biology class, and is never less than both cheerful and courteous.

*

It takes Jane a couple months to figure out Tarzan is flirting with her. To be fair, she’s distracted by a) her first semester of college, which is quite an adjustment, and b) Tarzan’s constant shirtlessness. He’s just _really_ handsome. It’s very distracting. Oh, and c) the fact that he keeps _coming in through the common room window on the second floor_ , just swinging himself in while Jane and Dejah Thoris are sitting on the couch or studying at their desks and plopping himself down on the floor, grinning up at them, like climbing in through a window is a completely normal thing to do. So yes, Jane is a little distracted, and it takes her a while to notice that while Tarzan is sweet to _everyone_ , he’s...specially sweet to her. He’s clearly learned her class schedule, because it seems like he’s always “just passing by” and offering to carry her book after Stats, when she has the enormous unwieldy textbook that doesn’t fit in her bag. On nights the dining hall has her favorite chicken dish, he comes and hunts her up in the library and reminds her to get dinner. He brings her interesting leaves and pebbles he finds during his random excursions into the woods, and they always _are_ interesting, pebbles with fossils in them or leaves that are unlikely colors or shapes. Jane keeps them lined up on the windowsill in her and Dejah Thoris’s room, and Dejah Thoris grins at her every time she adds a new one, like she knows something Jane doesn’t.

Tarzan also starts having a thermos of coffee waiting for her every morning when she comes stumbling out of her double, and it’s _that_ that finally tips her off. It takes a week of morning coffee - morning coffee that means he got up well before she did and went all the way to the dining hall and back - but after he has coffee waiting on _Sunday_ , when Jane stumbles out of bed at ten in the morning with her hair in an enormous tangle, when Tarzan could be off parkouring his way around campus or communing with the trees or whatever he’s _usually_ doing on Sunday mornings. He _vanishes_ on Sunday mornings, usually, and is gone until quite late in the evening.

But he’s in the common room, with a mug of coffee and a hopeful expression and no shirt - of course - and Jane takes the coffee and _looks_ at him, at his broad cheerful smile and his absurdly nice hair and his really remarkable chest, and sips the coffee - just how she likes it, cream and sugar and a tiny dusting of cinnamon, she’s not even sure how he learned what she likes - and says, “Why?”

“I like you,” Tarzan says, like it’s just that simple.

Jane sips the coffee again, and then puts it down, very carefully, on the table beside the couch, and steps forward, and raises her face to be kissed.

It is, as she really ought to have expected, a very good kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the FFC prompt, "Roommates AU."


End file.
